Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/4] tests: remove most uses of test_i18ncmp

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2021 13:25:18 -0800

Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason  <[email-masked]> writes:

>> As a follow-up to d162b25f956 (tests: remove support for
>> GIT_TEST_GETTEXT_POISON, 2021-01-20) remove most uses of test_i18ncmp
>> via a simple s/test_i18ncmp/test_cmp/g search-replacement.
>
> I am a bit hesitant to take this step, primarily because the
> distinction between test_cmp and test_i18ncmp is serving as a sign
> for tests to identify if they are dealing with translatable messages
> or plumbing/machine-readable messages.

I agree: in particular, I would value the ability to run tests with,
say, LANG=fr_CH.UTF-8 and catch localization-specific issues that way.
Removing the test_i18ncmp helper removes that ability.

That said:

[...]
> So, perhaps we should bite the bullet and just take this step.

If we don't have a convenient way to keep "testing the testsuite"
(i.e., some kind of CI run that uses a locale other than C), then I
agree that explicitly removing the test_i18ncmp / test_cmp distinction
is better than letting it bitrot.

Thanks,
Jonathan